Although I seldom hit the woods with just one objective, the
blessing to living in Wisconsin is you can appreciate several things at
once. One of my warm weather
favorites is mountain biking of course, and when I get the chance and am in the
right place, a little tracking as a side dish.
Recently, while visiting a far eastern county forest, I took
the opportunity of a late night rain storm to provide only fresh tracks on an
early morning ride. Normally
houndsmen would be out running bear, but none were in the area that I
observed. My knobbie tracks were
the only ones on the sandy forest road. Some friends had sadly described a lack
of tracks and sign in the area over the course of the past year, but I was hopeful. Deer, turkey and bear tracks were pretty
common, with the former scattered everywhere, but what I was interested in were
prints from wolves that had been more common a few years ago.
Distressingly, the local game warden had reported five or
six poached wolves over the course of the past 12 months in this area and with
the newly created wolf hunting season also in force, the pack that once roamed
this particular territory had dwindled.
Nevertheless, a chance to return and ride the fatbike and explore a
little may turn up something.
Forest roads and ATV trails have been in the past good
places to track in the summer. The
heavy traffic churns the soil up into long stretches of deep sand, fairly easy
to spot imprints in the soft surface.
The recent rain firmed the surface and made pedaling easier at the
least. For miles on end it was
clear the whitetails had quickly been out and about after the evening
storm. Some sign was mashed in the
now drying road, indicating the animals had been out right after the drops had
stopped. Others were like perfectly stamped imprints with dry sand grain
edges-animals that maybe passed by an hour or two before I.
Deer leave a sure tale scuffed up print that one can spot
far down the road-dainty walkers they are not. But a few miles later there were different tracks-more
pressed in, one deep, the other less so.
Common in the area are coyotes, but their tracks are more oval and the
center toes a bit larger than the side ones. These were wolf tracks, an adult and pup, now 4 or 5 months
old. The adult stayed the course
and had trotted nearly straight down the road for a 1/2 mile. The youngster for the most part did as
well, but scattered deer bones in the sand, remnants from a last November
carcass dump in the county forest, pulled him (or her) aside, curiosity could
not be contained. Sign read that
the partial bleached spine had to be pawed and sniffed around, then a quick
scat left as a maker before returning alongside the adult, now a ways down the
road.
As they traveled together the pup eventually walked in line
with the older wolf avoiding any other distractions along the way. I stopped and shot a few photographs,
excited that there would be a next generation roaming this area for now. They ultimately turned off the forest
lane into a woods trail and from there my tracking would end.
It may be just
a little thing-following two animal’s paw prints, but for me, they told a
story, maybe just a very brief paragraph of how they live, but the sentences in
their steps described their life
and survival, something I was happy to read.